Allison Hantschel

Allison Hantschel is a 10-year veteran of the newspaper business. She publishes First Draft, a writing and politics blog, with her partners Holden, Jude and Scout. She is the author of the books Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs (2011, Arcadia Publishing, with Mike Danahey) and It Doesn’t End With Us: The Story of the Daily Cardinal, about a great liberal journalism institution (2007, Heritage Books). She also edited the anthology “Special Plans: The Blogs on Douglas Feith and the Faulty Intelligence That Led to War” (2005, William, James & Co.) Her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Daily Southtown, Sirens Magazine, and Alternet. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two ferrets, and approximately 60 tons of books.

I haven’t seen all of Girls, because I’m about 20 years past the target market, because squick humor generally isn’t my thing, and because Lord God I watch enough TV already. But something about Lena Dunham and/or her work makes people who are not otherwise unintelligent start spouting the most ridiculously sexist bullshit*, and I dig that about her, hard.

If they’re not paying their writers, it’s not because they’re broke. Stop listening to them when they bitch that they can’t afford you. They have no incentive to tell you the truth any more than any other entrenched power structure does. They have plenty of money. They’re just not spending it on you and you, Mr. Noble Skeptic, are buying their argument without looking at the numbers.

Our political press likes to talk about maneuvering and posturing as if it’s just peacocks strutting around, as if the decisions politicians make are entirely about them and the show they’re giving and getting.

Forgotten in this type of coverage are the people affected by those decisions

You know, when I’m pimping out a fellow blogger’s book, or my own, at least I say right up front, “Go buy this, she’s a pal of mine.” My problem with the entire journalistic “ethics” argument today is that it over-polices actual stated opinions and ignores the value of transparency. Just tell me what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, and how many bodies they have on you to get you to do this kind of thing for them.

I think part of the problem is how we’re defining “attack” ads. Is anything that mentions a Republican candidate’s position on an issue an “attack?” If you go out in front of God and everyone and say “I don’t actually believe ladies are really people, at least not so that they can make the kinds of full decisions about their bodies that I can make about mine” and someone, you know, records it and shows it on TV, is that an “attack?”